Woody Allen: 'Affirmative action...does not work when it comes to casting'

Woody Allen has addressed the lack of diversity in his movies, insisting, “I always cast the person who fits the part most believably in my mind’s eye.”

The filmmaker opened up about a common criticism of his work in his new memoir, Apropos of Nothing, where he insists the commonly-spotted flaw has nothing to do with racism.

“I’ve taken some criticism over the years that I didn’t use African-Americans in my movies,” he writes. “And while affirmative action can be a fine solution in many instances, it does not work when it comes to casting.

“I always cast the person who fits the part most believably in my mind’s eye.”

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Allen goes on to insist he has “always been a typical liberal and sometimes maybe even radical,” noting: “I marched in Washington with Martin Luther King, donated heavily to the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) when they needed extra to push the Voting Rights Act, named my children after my African-American heroes and said publicly in the 1960s that I was in favour of African-Americans achieving their goals by any means necessary.

“Anyhow, when it comes to casting, I do not go by politics but by what feels dramatically correct to me,” he concludes.

The veteran director’s controversial memoir was quietly published on Monday) by Grand Central Publishing, a branch of Hachette Book Group, after the project was overshadowed by renewed allegations of childhood sexual abuse against Allen by his daughter Dylan Farrow, which he also addresses in the book.